


Astrophe

by star_child



Series: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Growing Up, M/M, Space Metaphors, Way Too Many Space Metaphors, mentions of bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7869862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/star_child/pseuds/star_child
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(AZ-straw-fee)<br/>noun<br/>the feeling of being stuck on earth</p><p><em>Tooru is a grand king – grand </em>puppetmaster<em> – a jerk of his fingers and the world spins, throwing Hajime to the ground as he tries to hang on. </em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Astrophe

**Author's Note:**

> hajime has always known that tooru belongs to the sky, and he thinks he belongs at the bottom of the ocean

Tooru has always been something amazing and incredible, looking up, striving ahead, dancing joyously through life. Constellations hide in the freckles on his shoulders and cheeks, nebulas explode in his irises. The sun shines from those perfectly white teeth, and he is always so, so blindingly bright.

Hajime is not like him. He feels as though he pales in comparison, small and clumsy, dim. His eyes are dull, shallow and gray, at best a watery blue. His teeth are crooked, there’s always dirt under his nails. He prefers looking to the ground, where flowers and grass grow, and animals scurry between the underbrush. This world has always been plenty beautiful to him, even if it has never seemed to satisfy Tooru.

He thinks he can understand, though, why Tooru is not happy with only this planet, only this life. They grow up with only a few meters between their houses, just a strip of grass on either side of Hajime's driveway. In the warm weather with all of the windows open, it's easy to hear the shouting coming from next door. Tooru's mother and her husband, married for less time than the boys have been friends.

“What do they fight about?” seven year old Hajime asks for the millionth time as he and Tooru walk laps around the block.

For the millionth time, six year old Tooru shrugs.

“You can sleep over at my house tonight, if you want.”

Crystal tears adorn Tooru’s cheeks, and he mumbles to their clasped hands that he would like to sleep over.

* * *

 

Sometimes he feels like he’s going to get whiplash, when he’s hanging out with Tooru, if not from the other boy’s insane mood swings, then from his own. Tooru can one-eighty like nothing Hajime has ever seen, shouting at him about the effects of zero gravity until it seems like a switch is flipped in him, a single word or phrase, something as small as a facial expression or noise, sends him careening back to earth. It makes Hajime’s head spin like it’s in zero gravity.

And if Tooru’s not the one changing emotions like clothes, Hajime is the one spinning in circles. He’ll find himself bouncing along beside Tooru, just as many miles into the atmosphere, until realization hits him like a meteor. Tooru will keep going, forever ascending, as Hajime remembers the weights around his ankles. They drag him down, away from Tooru in the exosphere, down through the thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, troposphere, altitude dropping, dropping, dropping, until he hits the ocean. And then he sinks further still, Tooru lost among clouds and satellites as Hajime makes friends with the fish on the ocean floor.

It’s not so bad when they’re at Hajime’s house, and they can lose themselves in the soft pastel paint of the rooms, the sunlight always streaming in through big windows, his mother’s endless energy that matches Tooru’s – she’s so young herself, still in her twenties despite the boys approaching middle school in the coming years. She’ll cook them nearly anything they can dream up, tell them wonderful stories that make Hajime forget the invisible weights on his ankles, make him feel as though he’s floating to the surface, six miles closer to Tooru.

It’s… different, when they’re at Tooru’s house.

It always feels somehow dirty to Hajime, even if there aren’t miscellaneous items hanging around like there are in his own. Heavy curtains cover the window, and the air smells old and stale, like the windows have never been opened. The tv is a constant background noise, casting blue light over the darkness of the living room, while his mother and her husband are almost always yelling at each other over it.

Tooru is a child of the sky, Hajime doesn’t think he belongs in this cave of a house.

“Where is he going?” eight year old Hajime asks as he peers out Tooru’s window, watching his step dad get into his car as he shouts back toward the house.

“I don’t know,” eight year old Tooru replies, not looking up from the large book in his lap. Snow falls so heavy outside that Hajime can barely see the white car drive away. “Sometimes he just leaves. He always comes back, though.”

Hajime turns around and goes back to the bed where Tooru sits. He doesn’t ask if he _wants_ him to come back. Instead he peers at the book over his shoulder, a two page spread on Jupiter’s four main moons stares back at him. Tooru’s reading his bible, then. “Let’s go make hot chocolate,” Hajime says.

“I don’t want any,” Tooru mumbles to Callisto.

“Yes you do, you’re always bugging me for hot chocolate.”

Tooru looks away, face wrinkling.

“You look like –” Hajime leans over his shoulder to peer at the book, looking for the moon covered in lines. “– Europa, with your face scrunched up like that.” He thinks he sees a cheek life with his smile. “That’s your lying face. Come on.”

Tooru sniffles, wipes his nose on the sleeve of the sweater Hajime’s mom bought him for christmas. It’s navy blue, spotted with small constellations that Hajime still has memorized in Tooru’s freckles, hidden now, just for the winter. He allows Hajime to lead him by the hand to his own kitchen.

Tooru’s mother is out on the porch smoking, so they’re alone in the kitchen. Tooru stands off to the side, unfamiliar in his own house, as Hajime opens the fridge for milk.

“Grab me two mugs and pour the milk?” he asks as he sets the jug on the counter, just to give Tooru something to do with his hands. He turns to the cabinet to get hot chocolate mix, whips around again when he hears Tooru yelp. He turns in time to see a mug, tan with sunflowers on it, fall from Tooru’s fingers. It bounces off the counter, and for a moment Hajime thinks they’re safe, but then it falls to the floor.

The mug shatters, pieces of ceramic and milk flying outward like a star imploding.

Hajime shouts as Tooru starts to take an automatic step back, “Don’t move!” The last thing he wants is for him to cut his feet on pieces of ceramic, add debris to their growing supernova.

They’re still standing there when Tooru’s mother storms in, silent in the vacuum of space. “What the fuck is _this_ mess?!” she demands when she sees the broken mug and milk splattered all over the floor.

“I – We were making – hot c – chocolate,” Tooru stutters out, shrinking back into himself, the light of his eyes and the blood of his face sucked into the black hole inside of him. He’s shaking. “I just dropped – I didn’t mean – It was an accident…”

“‘It was an accident!’” his mother spits back at him. Tooru shrinks, eyes falling to the floor. Hajime watches, silent, as Tooru’s mother raises her hand, hits him on the mouth, not even forceful enough to make his head turn. “Clean this mess up,” she hisses, quiet. She whirls on her heel, a decade and a half older than Hajime’s own mother. She catches sight of him, low to the ground where he feels he belongs, at home with the grass and the dirt, and does nothing more than glare.

She storms from the room, the open door admitting a blast of cold air that breathes life back into Tooru and straightens his spine, before it slams shut again.

When she’s gone, Hajime scrambles to the side, fumbling with the door to the basement so he can grab the mini vacuum that sits on the steps. “Hold on,” he says to Tooru, voice coming out choked. “Don’t move yet, I’ll be right there, okay? Hold on.”

Tooru does as he’s told, still as a statue as Hajime flicks on the little hoover. He sucks up all the tiny pieces of the broken mug as quickly as he can, carefully picks up the larger pieces with his fingertips and tosses them in the trash, mops up the milk with paper towels. Tooru doesn’t move a muscle.

“Okay,” Hajime says when the floor is clean. “It’s okay, Tooru, you can move.”

In tiny shivers and jerks, Tooru steps forward to his friend, slowly leans his head against his chest. Hajime lifts his hand, laying it across Tooru’s shoulders and holding him lightly in place. “I’m sorry,” Tooru whispers into his friend’s shoulder, tremulous like the moon on the ocean. “It was just… a mistake…”

Hajime lifts the other arm, this one settling around Tooru’s waist. “It’s okay.”

* * *

 

By the start of middle school, Tooru is spending all of his time in the troposphere, away from his mother and her husband, away from the rude kids at school, away, even, from Hajime. No matter how close he gets, no matter if he’s next door or in the same house, in the same room, even pressed up against him as they watch movies, Hajime feels as though he’s miles away, pinned to the ground.

Twelve year old Hajime elbows twelve year old Tooru as they do homework on Hajime’s living room floor. “Hey. Come to the lake with me.”

Tooru looks up, startled. “What?”

Hajime rolls his eyes, more for show than anything else. They both know he doesn’t mind repeating himself. “Earth to Oikawa,” he sighs. Their names have switched with the turn of the year. “I _said_ , come to the lake with me. I need a break.” He disdainfully eyes his half finished maths worksheet, Tooru’s neatly filled out across from him, doodled planets and stars along the edges. He has a feeling this is their last year together before Hajime moves down, as he always does. Only this time, there’s no more room for Tooru to move up.

“We haven’t been to the lake in years,” Tooru says, head tilted in confusion.

“Yeah. So let’s go right now,” Hajime repeats, standing up and brushing off his pants. He holds out his hand when Tooru continues to simply stare up at him, eyes vast and dark like the universe. Finally he reaches up, places his hand in Hajime’s and lets himself be pulled to his feet. They don’t let go even as they leave the house.

The sun is setting as they walk, casting the neighborhood in shades of pink and yellow, orange and purple. The clouds are pale purple, drifting above Hajime’s head. He grips Tooru’s hand tighter to keep him from floating up to join them.

“Why do you want to go to the lake all of a sudden?” Tooru asks, swinging their hands.

Hajime shrugs. “You said it yourself, we haven’t been in years. Don’t you miss it?”

Tooru tilts his head to look up at the sky. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Hajime nods in satisfaction, pulling Tooru along just a bit faster. The evening is still light, but it’s not that short of a walk to the lake and he wants to get there before it gets dark. Tooru skips along beside him, humming quietly.

The walk doesn’t take as long as he remembers. Then again, their legs have gotten longer, they can walk much faster. Tooru shouts and runs ahead, crunching through the old leaves on the floor of the path and spinning with his arms out, like some malfunctioning satellite. Hajime follows behind, slower, taking time to admire the tiny patch of white flowers that has sprung up beside the path.

When he makes it to the water’s edge, Tooru has calmed down. He’s standing on the shore, arms wrapped around himself as he stares out at the stillness of the water. To their left is a tiny wooden dock, looking a little less sturdy than it did when they were children. Across the water, beyond the lilypads and grasses and distant family of swans, is more forest, like that which surrounds them.

“It’s prettier than I remember,” Tooru says softly. Goosebumps rise on his skin and Tooru spreads his fingers, trying to cover more area. Hajime doesn’t ask if he’s cold, because he knows Tooru’s stubbornness will tell him he’s not, so he just slides his jacket off – olive green, his favorite army jacket – and drapes it around Tooru’s shoulders. He hesitates for half a moment, looks like he’s going to shrug it off, but then he reaches up to grab the lapels and hold it closed, shooting the last of the sun’s rays at Hajime with a smile.

“I bet I can skip a stone farther than you,” Hajime says to cover up the saturn sized ball of ice that smile launches into his chest.

“Oh yeah? I bet you can’t,” Tooru grins. He pushes his arms through the sleeves of the jacket, zipping it up halfway. They’re the same height now, as Tooru is finally catching up, but Hajime is still bulkier, so his jacket hangs off Tooru’s slim frame.

Not about to lose a bet by forfeit, Hajime bends down to start sifting through the rocks at his feet, and after a few moments Tooru joins him. Hajime doesn’t stand until he has a few suitable rocks, but Tooru stays crouched on the ground.

“Oi. What are you doing down there?”

“I can’t find any,” Tooru mumbles. One hand is clenched around something, the other continuing to push through the stones at his feet.

“What’s in your hand, then?”

“Nothing,” Tooru says quickly, and he shoves it in his pocket.

Hajime rolls his eyes, but knows from experience that Tooru won’t tell him if he doesn’t want to. “Here.” He hands him two of his own rocks. Tooru stands and takes them without a word. Hajime crouches back a bit, sends his stone sailing out across the water. It skips once, twice, three, four times before sinking. “Beat _that_ ,” he says proudly, turning to his best friend.

Tooru gets a determined look on his face, eyebrows pinching together, tongue poking out the corner of his lips. He leans back – his stance is all off, but Hajime doesn’t say anything – and throws the stone.

It sails out, then just drops. They watch the waves ripple out like orbit rings of planets surrounding the sun, and Hajime suddenly remembers that Tooru has never been able to skip a single rock in his life.

He cracks up laughing, doubling over at the waist as Tooru rises in indignation, glaring. “Shut up!” he whines. Hajime laughs harder, wiping drops of the ocean from his eyes. “Iwa-chaaan,” Tooru whines. It’s only because he sounds close to tears himself that Hajime straightens, grinning at his best friend in the semi darkness.

“Look at you,” he smiles, “Haven’t changed a bit.” He throws an arm around his shoulders, pulls him over to press their foreheads together. He grins into Tooru’s watering eyes, and without thinking he leans into to kiss his cheek. It’s what his mom always does if he’s feeling sad, and it makes him feel better, so he figures it’ll work on Tooru.

(It does, and the tears clear away like clouds to reveal the stars.)

“I’ll teach you,” Hajime promises. “Come on, it’s easy.”

They practice skipping stones until Tooru can do it, and the sun has long since set behind the trees. Tooru holds his hand on the way home again and points to the sky with his free one, telling Hajime the stories of the constellations.

(When he puts his hand in his jacket pocket a few days later, he pulls out a translucent purple stone, smooth but filled with spiderweb fractures. He smiles, puts it on his windowsill.)

* * *

 

Some boys call Tooru a Pretty Boy in their second year of middle school. Hajime thinks it's true, Tooru is the prettiest person he's ever seen, but the way they say it – lips curled around the words like they taste bad, eyes skirting dismissively over Tooru – makes his blood boil. They leave the boys crumpled on the sidewalk and blood is scattered like stars across Hajime’s knuckles and tee shirt.

* * *

Also during their second year, Tooru’s mother becomes… unstable. She’s always smoked, but lately she’s started making herself drinks, a mix of Pepsi and sharp smelling amber liquid from a glass bottle, the name sounds… Italian, if Hajime had to guess. Something called _Bacardi Gold._ He observes from his and Tooru’s favorite place on the stairs as the ratio becomes less and less soda and more and more rum.

She largely ignores the both of them, even when Tooru _tries_ to get her attention. He’ll tug on her shirt, remind her that he needs a lunch for school, or new gym sneakers, or that she needs to sign a paper so he can join the volleyball club. Her face always remains impassive, like Tooru is just the wind, not the supernova Hajime knows he is. For most requests, she’ll steadily grow more annoyed, until she throws a 2,000 yen bill or two at him and snaps at him to do whatever he wants himself.

Once, only once that Hajime has seen, Tooru asks her if she can sign the slip saying she’s looked at his grades. She scoffs, sparing him a quick look of disgust as she pours herself another drink.

“Mama, please,” Tooru says quietly. “You don’t even… You don’t even have to look, just sign it,” he tries. The words form a small rock in Hajime’s chest, because he knows Tooru’s grades are perfect, and he knows he wants his mom to appreciate that.

“Leave me alone, Tooru,” his mother says in a voice that sends ice creeping between the vertebrae of Hajime’s spine. His mind screams _danger_ , but his mouth is frozen shut.

“But it has to be signed, or I’ll get in trouble…”

“You’re _going_ to be in trouble if you don’t _leave me alone_ ,” his mother spits, voice rising dangerously.

Tooru places the sheet on the counter, looking like he’s about to cry. He has to know he’s pushing it, he _has_ to and yet, “Mama…”

She throws her glass and drink to the ground – it seems to shatter before it’s on the ground – backhands him across the face, a shout on both of their lips as Tooru’s head goes flying with the impact. He falls to the floor, clutching his cheek with both hands. “I said shut the _fuck_ up!” his mother shouts, staring down at her son. Her foot twitches like she’s going to kick him, and Hajime finally leaps forward, planting himself between them.

Adrenaline pounds in his ears and fingertips, surging through his heart and dripping down to his toes. He is only thirteen, but puberty has made him tall and proud, fierce and loyal and bored. He glares up at Tooru’s mother, and as the seconds pass he begins to get the distinct feeling that he’s looking _down_.

She finally backs down, spitting on her own kitchen floor near Tooru’s face before storming out of the house.

Hajime deflates, shoulders sinking as he exhales the fight. It’s strange, to see Tooru on the ground. That’s not at all where he belongs, among broken crystal and his mother’s rage. He belongs to the stars.

* * *

 

They start high school two years later. By now Oikawa has ascended to the thermosphere, and the northern lights dance just beneath his skin, shimmer in his eyes. It’s only a matter of time before Hajime loses him to the exosphere, and he’ll be gone for good. He’s swept away by volleyball, his budding friendship with the two other first years on the team, and his newfound popularity. Traits that Oikawa has always possessed: athleticism, intelligence, a gentle kind of beauty, no longer alienate him from his peers. They’re exactly what draws them in, and Hajime worries that he’ll be drowned out.

For now, he manages to keep Oikawa grounded as much as he can, but feels horrible and selfish every second he does it. Guilt laps at the cavity of his chest, crests at high tide when Oikawa tells him a girl confessed to him, and Hajime says he thinks he shouldn’t accept.

“Don’t you think we’re too young for romance?” he grumbles when Oikawa asks _why_ he shouldn’t accept. “You always said you thought love doesn’t exist.” He recalls a nine year old Oikawa telling this to a ten year old Hajime. They lay on the grass in the shade of Hajime’s backyard; neither of them have ever met their fathers, Tooru’s mother and stepfather seem to hate no one more than each other, Hajime’s mother has never been on a date to his knowledge.

Oikawa is quiet for a minute, thoughtful. Hajime tugs him out of the clouds.

* * *

Sixteen year old Hajime stares at goosebumps and tear tracks over sixteen year old Oikawa’s neck and face. Without a word, he unwinds the scarf from around his neck and wraps it around Oikawa’s. The younger boy blinks at him in surprise, but lifts it up to bury his nose in it, close his eyes.

They don’t walk around the block while Oikawa’s parents fight anymore, instead they walk down to the lake, sit on the old fallen tree overlooking the water. To their left is the little dock, the boards broken now from when Oikawa fell through earlier in the year, trying to get a water sample for a science project. Hajime resists a smile at the memory.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” he tries instead, turning his attention back to Oikawa.

He bunches his shoulders up in the coat in a shrug. “More of the usual, really,” he says, voice muffled through the scarf, as though he’s speaking through the helmet of a spacesuit. “My mom does one thing, Orochi decides it’s definitely the wrong thing… I’m sick of it.”

“You’ve never liked him very much,” Hajime hums.

Oikawa shakes his head, eyes ahead but unseeing. “It’s… _more_ than that. I hate that I even exist in the same space as him.”

Hajime blinks, figures he probably shouldn’t be all that surprised.

Oikawa takes a moment to retreat into himself, hands disappearing into his pockets, shoulders hunching up as he lays his head on his knees. Hajime scoots closer, rubs his hand up and down between Oikawa’s shoulders, trying to keep his touch light enough to be gentle, but heavy enough to be grounding.

Though he’s becoming less and less sure that grounding is what Tooru needs.

* * *

 

Oikawa enters orbit during their third year of high school, beaming as he presents Hajime and his mother with his college acceptance letter. His smile is blinding, the northern lights explode from the spaces between his bones and swirl around him, lifting him so he seems to hover several inches above the worn carpet of Hajime’s home.

His mother wears a matching glow, jumping up and grabbing Oikawa’s hands, dancing with him around the living room as they radiate jubilance. Hajime smiles through the ocean flooding his lungs.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1SkepihYLE) and this [artwork](https://twitter.com/Rigiliz/status/767122409707204609)


End file.
